One of the allegations is that Hewlett-Packard’s former chairman and chief executive passed valuable information about his company’s pending acquisition of EDS several months before the deal was made public in 2008.

The watchdog is also interested in several things Hurd may have done prior to being ousted by his board of HP directors in early August.

One of the allegations is that Hurd is said to have told the former soft porn star Jodie Fisher about the EDS deal. Fisher later accused Hurd of sexual harassment, which led to an internal investigation by HP’s board.

While the board cleared him of harassment, an inquiry found that he misreported his expenses to the company.

The claim that he told Fisher about EDS first appeared in a letter that Fisher’s lawyer, Gloria Allred, wrote to Hurd in June. It was made public last month.

The SEC is apparently looking into Hurd’s botched expense reports and claims that he destroyed computer data prior to his departure from the company,.

The Journal’s source says there’s a chance that this may not develop into a lawsuit. HP said that it is co-operating with the SEC. Hurd is now president of Oracle, and given the bad blood that exists between the two companies, we would have thought that if HP was sitting on any evidence of his wrong doing, it would be a little happier to turn it over to the SEC investigators.